San Francisco Food Blog

a w./Yelp

The fried chicken sandwich: At some point, this was flapping around.

​As we learned last week, Mission Burger at Duc Loi Supermarket (2200 Mission at 18th St.) has swapped a fried chicken sandwich ($8) for its vegan burger -- a deservedly well-loved delectable a good many non-vegans are sad to see depart. Unfortunately, between the time-consuming process by which the crunchy patties were crafted, and the ire of a solitary vegan over a single and exceedingly minor case of fishy cross-contamination, the burger dudes seem happy to send that light, crunchy puck of kale and mushrooms drifting off into the sunset. We stopped by on Saturday to appraise the replacement.

A few ladies were tearing into saucy-looking specimens when we arrived, bellowing wordless incantations of glee between bites. Nominal vegetarians, they were also grilling the cook with regard to the old meatless standby's premature extinction. He relinquished no ground, describing the whole vegan burger endeavor as "too prohibitive" for the work he and his comrades were doing, and suggesting cheerfully that mourners should "get over it."

A perfect response, we thought, as we packed away a foil-wrapped parcel to haul home. We remembered something a good friend -- incidentally, also a good cook -- said a long time ago, back when our vegetarianism was in the grips of a death knell, a once-firm consumption-shaped identity fizzling fainter and fainter with each carnivorous undertaking. We were still wary of pork then, hesitant to throw down for ribs to cook at a backyard barbecue. "Don't get chicken!" he'd exclaimed as we'd walked towards the store, flabbergasted we were even entertaining the idea. "Chicken's a vegetable!"

Jared Zimmerman/Flickr

Stick a fork in it.

​Mission Burger, our heart is broken, too! Ever since we tried the vegan burger served at Duc Loi Market (2200 Mission at 18th St.), we've talked it up as one of the best burgers around. Sad to read that the vegan burger is being canceled due to a deep-fryer cross contamination complaint that led to what Mission Burger describes on its Yelp page as a broken heart.

Unfortunately, yes we will cancel it pretty soon because it takes a lot of work to make and was sort of just a labor of love -- love we lost a few weeks ago when people complained about frying a piece of battered fish in the same deep fryer as the vegan patty. Even though that was a one time contamination, we just don't want to make any vegans upset in the future. Maybe we'll bring it back some day when our broken hearts have had a chance to mend a little.

Not to cry over spilled edamame, but the vegan burger was juicy, chock-full of tasty veggies like kale and shiitake/maitake mushrooms, hearty, and flavorful. If and when it comes back, we'll be there.

M. Brody

Sliders and a shake: The Cheesecake Factory with black truffles?

​Sliders and a shake: Is this the Cheesecake Factory with black truffles?​We blush to admit that we got caught up in the hype swirling around Hubert Keller's new Burger Bar. We showed up for a late-night snack on Saturday, its second day of operation, despite having visited the Fleur de Lys chef's Las Vegas Burger Bar shortly after it opened in Mandalay Bay in 2004 and leaving slightly less than, how you say, blown away. But hope springs eternal. Maybe especially when it comes to burgers.

Alas, once we entered the Macy's sixth floor space (reachable after store hours via a dedicated elevator) -- despite its Keller pedigree, the infamous $60 foie-gras- and truffle-slathered Rossini, its extensive beer and abbreviated wine list -- it was eminently clear that this is, after all, a chain restaurant, with all that that implies: beer-sign décor, annoying techno, mini TVs in the booths, T-shirts and mugs for sale, and indifferent service.

M. Brody

Channel surf 'n' turf: Booths come with their own TVs.

​The rather overwhelming, eight-page oversize menu offers a choice of four basic meats (Black Angus, $9.75; sustainably farmed Country Natural, $10.50; and American Kobe beef and buffalo, both $16.50) and four non-meat patties (veggie, salmon, and turkey, all $8.50; and chicken breast, $9.25), served in six different buns, with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and dill pickles.

Special orders not only don't upset Burger Bar, the kitchen apparently craves them. There's a list of more than 50 add-ons for customizing your burger, ranging from the expected (cheeses and bacons) to the less so (asparagus, pineapple, and pesto) to the downright unexpected (black Perigord truffle sauce, grilled half-lobster, and black truffles -- the latter a whopping $30).

Paul Trapani

RN74: Sworn enemy of democracy?

​Tom Robbins once wrote: "Columbus discovered America, Jefferson invented it, Lincoln unified it, Goldwyn mythologized it, and Kroc Big Mac'd it. It could have been an omniscient computer that provided this land with its prevailing ambiance, it might have been an irresistible new weapons system, a political revolution, an art movement, or some gene-altering drug. Isn't it just a little bit wonderful that it was a hamburger?" In September's burger-themed issue of Saveur, contributor Leslie Brenner, restaurant critic for the Dallas Morning News, less loftily echoed his sentiment, calling the hamburger "a potent symbol of good old American ingenuity and entrepreneurial independence."

Ironically, at Michael Mina's RN74 in the Millenium Tower down on Mission Street (301 Mission at Beale), the iconic hamburger is not something pretty much anyone can enjoy. If you want to munch on this restaurant's luxurious rendition of the standard -- a rich grind of rib eye and brisket, topped with Burgundian mustard and sandwiched between halves of a brioche roll -- you'll need to fork over nine times what you pay at In-N-Out -- and own one of the building's multi-million-dollar condos.

​As quoted in Grub Street late last week, Mina's weird, grammatically iffy rationale for excluding non-owners from hamburger heaven ("We really have a restaurant concept that we want to keep the way it is.") strikes us as completely silly. Restaurants often prepare a signature dish on the sly. However, they don't usually keep most of their customers from ordering it. How does this aspect of RN74's "restaurant concept" affect the dining experience? Are non-owners bummed they can't tuck in their ties, terrorize some herb fries, and attack a burger that most assuredly delivers on the promise of its pedigree? Do they despair, even as they order delicious-sounding yet less exclusive dishes like pumpkin soup with bacon-rosemary dumplings, and juniper oil and prime beef carpaccio? Do proud owners gloat as they douse their buns in ketchup? If an owner dines with a non-owner, might the non-owner, under the circumstances, have a burger? Does anyone really care, especially when the San Francisco outpost of Hubert Keller's Burger Bar opened Friday?

M. Brody

Home, home on the range: The buffalo burger with sweet potato fries.

​We usually don't resort to looking up restaurant names in the dictionary, but when you call yourself Acme -- "the highest point or stage; one that represents perfection of the thing expressed" -- you're asking for it. Would you be shocked to know that Acme Burgerhaus, which opened late last week on Divisadero, offers a decent burger that isn't anywhere close to being the acme of anything?

M. Brody

Late weekend hours and beer discounts might be the tastiest things here.

​In a space slightly nicer than fast food, with five tables and arty photos of musicians on the walls (for sale at $250 and $550!), Acme offers your choice of eight different half-pound burgers: Niman Ranch beef, chicken, Boca, salmon, buffalo, lamb, and so-called Kobe beef, $6.95-$10.95 (add cheese for 50 cents more). Sides include regular and sweet potato fries, chili-cheese fries, and beer-battered onion rings, chili cheese fries ($2.95-$3.95). There's also a choose-your-own-toppings salad (spring mix or spinach, plus seven ingredients from a list of over two dozen, $5.95; add grilled steak, chicken, or tuna for $2), with a choice of four bottled dressings. Beverages are limited to soda and six beers on tap: Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada, Amstel Light, Blue Moon, Pabst, and IPA.

​We tried the buffalo burger ($7.95), mindful that the mild-tasting meat is unusually lean and therefore difficult to cook accurately. Sure enough, our medium-rare burger came out closer to medium, but still slightly juicy. The toppings bar included romaine, pale tomatoes, thick-sliced red onion, good-quality dill pickle spears, and both sliced and pickled jalapeños, as well as the largest dispensers of mayo, ketchup, and mustard we've ever seen. Fully dressed, our burger was, well -- okay. Our favorite part was the grilled, glossy brioche-like bun.

M. Brody

The lunchtime Juicy Lucy: Half the protein, pretty much all the flavor.

​Fish & Farm offers you a lady-or-the-tiger choice: Do you want to spring $8 at lunch for the takeaway Juicy Lucy -- two 2-ounce Niman Ranch burger patties sealed around a core of American cheese -- or $14 at dinner for the 7- to 8-ounce Niman Ranch cheeseburger, covered with melted white cheddar?

Otherwise the burgers are, as a hostess told us, close cousins. The same grilled onions, house-made pickles, secret sauce, and toasted Acme bun. At lunch, the burger comes with fresh potato salad, and you can get it to go or perch at a table in the Fish & Farm dining room (sans servers), part of the restaurant's American Box lunch service. At dinner, there are fries on the plate, you can add Hobbs bacon or a fried farm egg for an extra two bucks, wash it down with a cocktail, wine, or beer, and command anything else you'd like from Fish & Farm's menu -- maybe six oysters on the half shell ($15), mac 'n' cheese with ham hocks ($6), or a chocolate peanut butter mousse ($9) that comes with chocolate ice cream, salted caramel sauce, and peanut brittle.

​Having sampled both day and night burgers, SFoodie knows they're juicy indeed. The lunch version goes down a soft and succulent treat; but if you want a charred crust, you're better off with the bigger, nighttime version (and ask for it that way -- blackened). The choice is yours.

Fish & Farm 339 Taylor (at O'Farrell), 474-3474. American Box lunch takeway: Mon-Fri, 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Dinner: Tue-Wed, 5-10 p.m.; Thu-Sat, 5-11 p.m. Closed Sun-Mon.

A. Simmons

These used to be pretty. Really.

Sorry for the picture. The aïoli drips, errant dabs of chili-garlic paste, and grease spots are the result of a tortuous trek from Mission Burger's makeshift digs at Duc Loi Supermarket on Mission and 18th to an apartment seven blocks away, on Capp. The burgers slid across the counter on red-and-white cardboard trays, unshielded from the elements by protective paper wrapping. Five minutes later, they were on a huffing, capricious 49 bus, bouncing around the insides of two flimsy white bags clutched in desperate hands belonging to a tired, unbalanced body jolting back and forth in accordance with the vehicle's sudden stops and starts. By the time they arrived home, the burgers were beauty queens no longer. 

You're better off eating these in the store, sitting on a cardboard box, hunched over your crumb-strewn lap, trying to avoid raining splashes of condiments down onto your shoes. The meat burger ($8), with its Blumenthal-inspired patty, a granulated dream team of brisket, short ribs, and chuck, is a squishy little leviathan of flavor. The silky, salty strands of beef clump fairly loosely together, their deep richness accentuated, sort of to the point of absurdity, by caramelized onions, a slice of Monterey Jack, and a generous slick of caper aïoli, all pinioned above and under halves of a perfect toasted Acme bun. Sandwiched in the same kind of roll, the vegan burger ($7) oddly feels just as sumptuous, a fried square, hard, dark-brown, and crunchy on the outside, and delicate and flaky within, like some unholy cross between falafel and fish. The crust shatters with the first bite, revealing beads of edamame, shreds of roasted kale, and sliced shiitake and maitake mushrooms, the earthy, mineral-y bits suspended in a fava-chickpea cloud, tumbling out to mingle with miso mayonnaise, bright, clean fennel slaw, and avocado.

Duc Loi kind of exemplifies the waves of change this neighborhood has seen in the past six years. In 2003, this corner housed a run-down, supercheap market with an awning and unspectacular produce laid out in bins on the sidewalk outside. Then, it disappeared and became a dirt lot. Then, it became condominiums with empty commercial space filling the first floor. Many expected a Whole Foods to settle in, but Duc Loi re-emerged, with windows, lights, a meat counter, and somewhat better produce. Now, it's the setting for Mission Street Food's latest expansion, and that, if taste counts for anything, is a really good thing.

Duc Loi is donating $1 from the sale of each burger to the San Francisco Food Bank. Lunch service begins at noon and continues until the ingredients disappear. At this point, Mission Burger is open every day except Thursday.

Mission Burger at Duc Loi Supermarket 2200 Mission (at 18th St.), 551-1772

 

Tags: restaurant reviews

J. Birdsall

Soft, with an inescapably smoky shadow.

Keep in mind it was out on Geneva, in a bar, on a Sunday evening. Means you have to overlook the dude in the I [heart] *naked mudflap girl* tee-shirt, clutching a pitcher-size stein of PBR -- not his first of the day, clearly -- falling on his ass after walking into a chair. Totally not exaggerating. So even though pockets of last night's crowd skewed Excelsior, James Moisey's cooking at the Broken Record (1166 Geneva at Edinburgh) skewed solidly Mission, or maybe Noe Valley. Hell, even Berkeley. 

Last night: burger Sunday at the BR, two weeks after Moisey took over the kitchen. His beef and bacon burger ($8) offered a glimpse of bar food's possibilities: chuck the chef sourced himself, ground on the premises with a certain percentage of bacon, the way you lard a pot roast with pork fat. It resulted in a soft, lightly packed patty with a silky softness and an inescapably smoky shadow. Perfectly ripe avocado ($2 extra) turned the texture something close to buttery, with a hit of cheddar tang and refreshing acidity via a slice of Purple Cherokee tomato.

Moisey's bacon job just might be the nicest burger you'll ever eat to a synapse-crushing soundtrack of early Clash, played at a volume that'd drown out the noise of a garbage truck dropping a dumpster. Onion rings ($4) -- red-onion rings flocked with fearsome crunch -- were nice, too (photo after the jump). The BR kitchen's open every night, 6-11 p.m. Burgers offered every Sunday.

Continue reading " City of Burgers: The Broken"...

Tags: restaurant reviews

Juliane N./Yelp

Fat and juicy.

Who'd have thunk, among all the interesting Japanese- and Korean-influenced plates we tried at a recent gluttonous dinner at Namu (439 Balboa at Sixth Ave.), that the one we found ourselves dreaming about afterwards was the burger?

The outlines are pretty much diner classic, despite daikon sprouts and a side of pickled daikon. The fat, juicy Niman Ranch patty shows up on a glossy pain de mie bun slicked up with Dijon and aïoli, along with your choice of cheddar, Jack, or Swiss ($12). Choose French fries or a salad to go with. For an added Korean kick, you can add kimchi relish for a buck.

It's thrilling, but the real thrill is the burger's wonderfully charred taste, courtesy of bincho-tan smoldering in the grill. Perfect washed down with one of Namu's unusual infused han soju cocktails ($9) -- the spicy Thai chili or the one infused with pu er tea.

Meredith Brody

Deliciously retro.

 We've gone on record as being big fans of Best-O-Burger's satisfying slideresque burgers and crisp onion strings (inaccurately named Ring-Os). But the tiny spot on Belden Place (493 Pine at Kearny) didn't make it into heavy rotation on account of its utter lack of seating. You could perch on the planters across the street on Pine or otherwise just go wander off somewhere, while all that off-limits seating from the other restaurants crowding Belden seemed to exist solely to tempt you. It felt cruel.

 

But as of this week, Best-O-Burger has indoor seating, in a semi-subterranean but spacious room two doors down on Belden. Tell the counter guy you're eating in and your food will be brought to you (on a silver tray, no less) at one of the basic but functional white tables ringed with bright yellow chairs.

To celebrate this new luxury, we ordered a Sloppy Bob ($2.44), Best-O's version of the retro and hard-to-find Sloppy Joe: grilled, loose-ground Black Angus beef in a spicy, tomatoey "secret" sauce and topped with cheese, a layer of Ring-Os providing a welcome bit of crunch. Yum-o and cheap-o, since one was plenty for us. (Note: The one-piece Sloppy Bob doesn't appear on the menu, but you can ask for one.) We washed it down with an excellent vanilla shake ($2.99 small/$3.99 large), made with Häagen-Dazs. Pic of the brand-new dining room after the jump.

Mary Ladd

Double the meat, double the delcious.

Though some may gripe that this place has all the makings of a restaurant that exists solely to cater to drunks, Thrill of the Grill has more to offer than that. Sure, it's a super casual restaurant that may at first glance seem like a logical meeting spot for the wasted. And it does fulfill all the criteria for drunk hangout: prime Valencia corridor location; carb-o-riffic menu of burgers, cheesesteaks, and pizza; late hours; piped in technopop; and delivery service. But Thrill of the Grill deserves serious mention for its juicy, hearty burgers alone.

With its hint of smokiness and double stack of beef patties (a blend of ground Kobe and regular beef), the Kobe Burger ($6.5) we tasted only needed a touch more melt on the grated cheddar cheese, please. The burger fared better in comparison to the Thrill of the Grill's Philly cheesesteak sandwich with grilled onions and Provolone -- like the skinny freezer fries, it was passable, if nothing extraordinary. Drinks are of the nonalcoholic variety only, and include soda, iced tea, and organic juice blends. In other words, get your drink on elsewhere before coming here, drunks -- and everyone else, too.

Thrill of the Grill 535 Valencia (at 16th St.), 776-7100

Come here expecting some sturdy simulacrum of the BOCA, and you're likely to leave pissed. The Embarcadero branch of the Plant opened last Thursday in Pier Three, a stunning, leafy Cass Calder Smith-designed space that brings together the treehugger and the modernist over fresh plates of California café cooking. Sit at one of the teak tables fronting the murky, bottle-green bay, in view of the trucks lazily making their way across the bridge in the distance, and you can feel like a genuine tourist in your own city.

Back to that burger. Like its cousin at the original Plant at Steiner and Chestnut, it's a concoction of lentils, ground mushrooms, beets, cashews, and bulgur, patted into a soft, friable disc, as darkly pink as red velvet cake. In other words, a burger in gesture only (it's even slapped between sliced bread, not a bun) and clammy and a tad mushy to boot. But in classic veggie-burger style, it's the everything else that makes a passable simulacrum out of even the miserable BOCA. In this case, avo slices, cheese (we went for white cheddar), and vividly sweet roasted onion did more than merely suggest burger-ness. And we have to admit it made us feel virtuous, in spite of - or maybe because of -- its diffuse vegetal flavors and rusky fibers. At least nothing died to produce it, or audibly screamed, anyway. There's something to be said for that.

The Plant Cafe Organic Pier Three, The Embarcadero, 984-1962.

Janine Kahn

When there are excellent pork ribs, baby back ribs, pulled pork, and brisket on the menu, a burger might be the last thing on your mind. But if you're in a burger mood, head to Baby Blues for the superb Lasker ($8.95), a big, loosely-packed, 10-ounce beauty made of chuck ground with blue cheese and maple bacon. No one could tell us why it's named Lasker, but it hardly mattered: The added fat guaranteed a moist, tender interior under a hefty grilled crust. The patty comes on a floury roll that compresses around the juicy meat but still holds up.

You get a hefty side of crunchy coleslaw, pickle spear, tomato, onion, and the very interesting house-made condiment made with what Baby Blues calls "lincolnberries" (we think they're lingonberries), which looks like ketchup but tastes like mustard. You're also free to slather it with one of several house barbecue sauces: ginger-Tabasco, regular mild, and the very hot Triple-X Porno. Show up for the lunch special (noon-4 p.m.), and you get one side chosen from a tempting list of 14, along with a soda, for $12.95. The (refillable) sweet tea in the pic above, with burger and mashed sweet potatoes, will cost you $1 extra.

Baby Blues B-B-Q 3149 Mission (at Powers), 896-4250.

Actually, the only thing new about the Orson burger is that you can eat it while midday light is filtering through the atrium ceiling. The SOMA restaurant launched lunch service today (Tue.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.), and the burger ($12) is sure to be a mainstay. There's good reason for that: It's hyper-meaty, radiating a pure-beef taste so frank it achieves a kind of intimacy.

Of course, the house-baked bun helps. Fragile without being flimsy, it's the patty's perfect squishy frame. A trio of sauces consists of truffle mayonnaise, a squidgy spread of hard-cooked egg and bacon called "Cobb salad," and housemade barbecue sauce, which rocks an eerie duality of perfumey aromatics and lip-searing heat. Unlike the dinner burger, its lunchtime sibling comes a la carte, meaning you have to order the restaurant's signature duck-fat fries ($7) if you want them. (Basically, you want them.) Granted, this isn't the cheapest workday lunch you'll ever lay out for, but it might be among the most deftly engineered.
Orson 508 Fourth St. (at Bryant), 777-1508

Flame Gourmet Burgers 2985 College (at Ashby), Berkeley; 510-666-8500.

The East Bay has many contenders to burger immortality: Barney's, Café Rouge, Christopher's, Wood Tavern. But comparisons are tricky, since each operates in burger genres whose differences range from slight to whopping. There's gourmet, fast-food, and the most popular, a kind of hybrid. Elmwood District burger joint Flame has gourmet aspirations, but a recent visit revealed it to be squarely in the hybrid camp: Whatever points Flame racked up for using only grass-fed beef, it lost them to prefab freezer fries. (If you can abide a burger without fries, skip them altogether, especially since you have to pay extra.) Weirdly, in an era obsessed with sources, no one at the restaurant knew where the beef came from. Pressed, a manager said only that it was local. Pressed further, she revealed it was from Piater in Petaluma, producer we've never heard of). Whatever the source, grass-fed beef is lower in fat than grain-fed, which becomes obvious when you try to grill it medium-rare (it cooks unevenly and dries out fast). But Flame succeeded, while also getting a slight char on the outside. In fact, the meat turned out to be too juicy for its lightweight sesame bun, whose bottom quickly sogged out. True, the burgers here might not be as glamorous as the ones down the street at Wood Tavern, but grass-fed beef makes them guilt-free. Well, as guiltless as a carnivore can get in Berkeley.

Janine Kahn

The Urban Cowboy: Excessively accesorized

Urban Burger 581 Valencia (at 17th St.), 551-2483.
You can practically smell the ambition here, a burger joint open barely two weeks. The concept has all the signs of incipient burger empire, and why not? The owners' extended family can claim Toast in Noe Valley and the Grind Café in the Haight. Like Custom Burger on Seventh Street, the game here is customization: Pick a patty, weigh in on cheese, toppings, a spread, and bun. If free choice is anathema to you (or that last pint at the Phoenix has rendered the wall-mounted menu board nauseatingly swirly), you can opt for one of 10 prefabs. We chose the Urban Cowboy, as extravagantly accessorized as its flesh-and-blood namesake. The disc of antibiotic- and hormone-free Angus beef was squelched under a Baroque pile of bacon, onion rings, cheddar, and barbecue sauce, but -- really -- what did you expect? The real disappointment was the La Boulange bun, squishy as angel food cake, rendering the burger as hard to wrangle as a calf swathed in chiffon. Still, Urban Burger reaches for quality on a stretch of Valencia better known for cheap and fusty. We'll show up again, even when we're not likkered up.

Worth the odd, irrational splurge

Quiver Bar at Epic Roasthouse 369 The Embarcadero near Folsom, 369-9955.
Call it irony: Epic offers one of the priciest burgers in town, and engineers it out of trash. Okay: Not trash as most of us understand it, but rather the scraggly bits left from the kitchen's daily butchering, ground and seasoned. It's prime trash, different every day (the one pictured contains skirt steak, prime rib, and beef tenderloin), and it yields a primo burger, with a fine-ground texture that registers as creamy. It's the heart of Quiver's $20 Burger, Beer, and Brownie special, available daily from 11 a.m to 5 p.m. Even at that price, it has to be one of the most expensive sammies in town, but worth the odd, irrational splurge if only for the soaring bridge view, which becomes even more soaring at the other end of your ginormous pilsner glass of Anchor Steam or Trumer (your pick). As for the stiff, craggy brownie -- well, what do you expect for 20 bucks?